WHEN EUROPE ENSLAVED EUROPE

WHEN EUROPE ENSLAVED EUROPE

 

The famous 9th-century Muslim author Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab and the grandson of a Zanj slave, wrote a book entitled Risalat mufakharat al-Sudan ‘ala al-bidan (Treatise on the Superiority of Blacks over Whites), in which he stated that, Blacks:

…have conquered the country of the Arabs as far as Mecca and have governed them. "We defeated Dhu Nowas (Jewish King of Yemen) and killed all the Himyarite princes, but you, White people, have never conquered our country. Our people, the Zenghs (Negroes) revolted forty times in the Euphrates, driving the inhabitants from their homes and making Oballah a bath of blood." —Joel Augustus Rogers and John Henrik Clarke, WORLD’S GREAT MEN ...But these Africans were to be conquered in the 16th - the 20th century CE.

 This situation above related to events in the 8th and 9th century CE, at the peak era of the Arab slave trade, when vikings, Vandals, Lombards, Varangians etc in Europe, hunted and captured other Europeans, especially the Slavs to be sold in slave markets in the Arabian peninsula and North Africa. 

The word 'slave' is actually derived from Slavs, an European group of peoples. Not much people of the Soudan (land of the Black-skinned, in Arabic) were enslaved around this time, but the number of people of European descent, enslaved were exceedingly much, untill the 16th century CE when slavery was successfully re-focused on Africans, especially West Africans. Millions of Europeans were brought into north Africa in the state of servitude... This group gained dominance after the fall of the Moors in Europe, in 1492, and the Africans lost control and trade routes in the Mediterranean, added to the Turks takeover of Constantinople. For example, Mulai Ismael of Merknes had 25,000 European slaves who participated in the building of his colossal stables. The extent of this line of slavery left coastal areas of Europe vacated, as raids were often carried out to capture men, women and children.

 According to J.A. Rogers, in 'Nature knows no color line,' ...in 1721, king George I, lamented of how most of his subjects were 'taken into slavery in North Africa.' Earlier in the 12th century CE, Giovanni Dictus, known as Johannes Dictus, was a Black African and governor of Sicily under emperor Fredrick II, and was part of a group known as the 'Trinitarians' who often made 'collections in churches in Europe' in order to purchase and free enslaved Europeans in North Africa. 

The focus of slavery on Africans had intensified only in the 16th century CE. Before then, in the 8th century CE, captured and enslaved Africans in the Arabian peninsula were known as the 'Zanj,' but they were not numerous as much as Europeans. 

This enslavement of Africans came after a period when Arabian peninsula was the colonies of Africans. The 'hatred' for the "man of color" started at this era, but it was intensified in the later centuries, when the Arabians established, firmly, the trans-saharan trade routes. This had exposed the resources of Africa, and Africans, to the Mediterranean, Europa and Asia, through the 'silk routes.' Before then, in about 701 BC, during the time of Tirhaka, king of Cush, known as Ethiopia then, and later king of all of Egypt,(which differs in part, from modern day Ethiopia, in Africa), most of the Arabian peninsula were colonies of the Africans of Ancient times.